The Turning

The Turning is a church based specific and defined mission, held over a two-week period from 23rd August to 5th September. It consists of teams of people, in pairs approaching people on the street and asking them a couple of questions about faith and sharing verses of scripture with them, culminating in an offer to accept Jesus as saviour. Those who then make a decision for Jesus are contacted later that day or the next day and an arrangement is made to meet them for follow up discipleship, informally over coffee, once a week, for about an hour for the next nine weeks.

During the period of the mission there are also worship gatherings every night to which people can be invited where again they will hear a short gospel address and worship and pray together. These worship evenings are primarily aimed at the team and the wider church to pray, asking God to lead us to the people that He wants us to reach, the key to the success of The Turning is that it is soaked in the presence of God.

The fortnight of mission consists of two days initial training which will take place in Edinburgh, with opportunity to go out on the streets and practice what has been learned, with similar worship events in the evening for those who are taking part in the mission.

It is not essential that all those who are involved in the local outreach attend those meetings and receive that training because it will be replicated at a local level, daily throughout the following 12 days. However, it is essential that key people, leaders attend those days.

After those two initial regional hub training days, the following 12 days will consist of local mission, rolled out on the streets of Linlithgow and Bo’ness. Ideally two teams of two people will be on the streets each day. The day will consist of meeting in the morning around 10am for prayer and training. It’s very basic, it doesn’t require a great deal of understanding, anyone can do it, even children (one testimony I heard was of a 9 year old girl in Reading who had led scores of people to Jesus using The Turning’s strategy).

At around 12.30 the teams will go out onto the streets for an hour and approach people with the questions and verses they’ve learned, using a script from an app on their phone.

Following this, with permission, the persons details are taken, usually just a phone number and email address so that they can be contacted and followed up later.

After just an hour on the streets the teams return to the hub (which in our case will be 183) and share stories, pray and collate the names of people who made a decision for Jesus. They are then contacted, and a coffee/initial discipleship meeting is set up. They might also be invited to the evening gathering, either during the initial connection or by text/email that afternoon. Those evening gatherings would take place in Union Rd and potentially in Bo’ness depending on whether churches there were involved.

I think there are key principles at stake here.

We have not, in the nine years that I’ve been in St John’s at least, had a dedicated and proscribed mission event.

This is something that the whole church can get behind and be involved in.

It is soaked in prayer and carries the presence of God. I think this is the key factor that differentiates this from other missionary endeavours. It is absolutely centred in prayer, every morning, afternoon and evening there will times of specific and directed prayer. It appears to those who are leading this nationally, from their experience, that God is in this and using this to reach people.

It is part of a Scotland wide mission, with city hubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and potentially on Skye and local hubs in Linlithgow, Falkirk, Ayr etc.

If you’d like to be involved, either directly as a member of the team or in prayer support, please get in touch with me; david@stjohnslinlithgow.org

It’s going to be an amazing and exciting couple of weeks, the testimonies coming out of Reading, Newcastle, Cornwall etc are incredible with hundreds of people coming to faith in Jesus. I especially need people who are willing to engage in discipleship, meeting up with those who accept Jesus over a coffee weekly for a couple of months.